


Burning Driftwood

by clairza



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 20:52:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4236204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clairza/pseuds/clairza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wishes there was some logic behind the days he wants her the most.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burning Driftwood

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 16/9/2005

He wishes there was some logic behind the days he wants her the most. Especially lately, because it seems to be completely random, like some kind of lottery that’s slowly driving Lee insane.

It frakking sucks, wanting Kara. And he should know, because there’s never been a time when it’s been okay – she was Zak’s when his brother was alive and even more so when he was dead, and then it was the end of the world and now Lee is her superior officer and he should not be having these kinds of thoughts about her. 

He wonders, watching her from his rack as she rummages through her locker for something, whether Doc Cottle would have reason behind it, one that Lee could fix by taking the right pill or having the right shot because it’s getting ridiculous. Kara’s been fixing Raptors and she’s filthy, covered in fuel and grease and smelling disgusting. He shouldn’t want to lick the beads of sweat from her neck, to see what it tastes like, and he shouldn’t be imagining the way her breath might hiss out between her lips, the way she might shiver if he ran his hand down her back and – Lee shakes his head, hard.

He definitely needs to see Doc Cottle. 

Kara choses that exact moment to look over and see him, and he tries to look casual, as if he hasn’t been staring at her since she walked in two minutes ago. 

“You fixed it?” he asks.

“Of course.” She throws him a smirk, and he can’t help it, he gets up, comes over and leans next to her as she undoes the laces of her shoes.

“Starbuck wins again?”

“Yeah. The Raptor put up a courageous fight, but I took it down in the end.”

“Glad to know you can still kick something’s ass.”

“Ooh,” she says, stripping the coveralls off and grinning wickedly at him. “Someone’s had a bad day, haven’t they?”

“You know you smell revolting, right?”

She laughs. "Oh, frak you.” 

"You offering?" he says before he thinks, but it doesn’t quite sound like a joke. The smile fades from her eyes, replaced by something a lot darker and faintly predatory and he knows he's seen that look before and tries to place it.

"You couldn't handle me, Lee," she says, and shrugs her jacket off her shoulders and Lee follows the material slipping over her skin for a moment too long. When he snaps his eyes back up, she's staring straight at him with a smirk that he suddenly recognises; she wears it every time she climbs out of the cockpit of her Viper having shot something out of the sky.

By the time he’s worked out what he wants to say, she’s shut her locker door and has disappeared and he thinks about leaving it, but she seems to be winning every argument he’s had with her lately and he’s sick of it. He strips off, grabs a towel, and follows her into head, slamming the hatch shut behind him and locking it. 

He likes the look on her face when he steps into the showers, likes the way she glances over him as if she can’t help it, likes the way the soap almost slides out of her grip. Especially likes the glimmer of something like apprehension in her eyes, because frak it, he’s sick of playing this game, her game, and it’s about time he won a round.

“So, I can’t handle you,” he says, conversationally, as he turns the water on.

“Well.” She stands, hand on her hip with water washing the soap suds over her body. “Can you?”

He looks at her, looks over her for long enough that when he glances back up to her face, she’s staring at him, barely breathing, and the fingers on her hip are digging into the skin so much the indents are turning white and her other hand is clenched into a fist. 

“Lee -” she starts, and it sounds uneven, like she doesn’t know whether it’s supposed to be a question or not. 

He doesn’t answer her in words, yanks her towards him, his hands on her skin, slippery with the soap. She gasps, and he likes that too, likes it more when he kisses her into the warm spray, until she kisses him back, until she whimpers into his mouth before she finally wrenches away from him because she can’t breathe.

She manages to stammer out his name and then he’s got one arm hooked around her, the other hand sliding down over her, over her breasts, over her stomach and down between her legs. She jerks against him, shudders as his mouth finds her shoulder, her collarbone, and then she’s shifting, altering her stance to give him more access as he runs his tongue along a tendon of her throat.

He brings her right to the brink, until her fingers are clutching at his arms, her head buried in his shoulder, teeth on his neck. Right until her body is starting to shake, and then he stops.

She stiffens. “What’s the matter?” he says, softly, softly, and holds his fingers very, very still, his other arm pinning her tight so she can’t move, can’t grind down onto his hand. “Kara?”

“Please,” she gets out. “Gods. Please.”

“Please what?” Soft, implacable, and she’s trembling now.

“Lee, I swear to the gods – ” Her back arches.  _“Please._ ”

His hand slides up, clenches into her hair and yanks her head back, hard, so he can see her face, and she winces and he doesn’t frakking  _care_. She bites down hard on her bottom lip, and that shouldn’t be hot but it is, and he loses it, presses just the right spot with his thumb, moves his fingers just so inside her, and she gasps, her face crumbling like she’s in pain, and then she’s shaking, shaking, her knees buckling beneath her and he has to hold her up.

They end up leaning against the wall, his weight holding them both upright and her breathing sounds like sobs and when he pulls his hand away she whimpers. 

“So, Kara,” he says, finally, and waves his hand in her face, touches his fingers together. A slow, red burn creeps over her skin. “I think I can handle you.”

He steps away from her so quickly, her hands slap out onto the wall to keep her upright and he walks away with that sound ringing in his ears.

*

He nearly goes mad, dreaming about her, for the next two days.

It doesn’t help that Kara totally, absolutely ignores him. He knows he deserves it, and he’s torn between wanting to find her and apologise and staying as far away from her as possible, so he doesn’t have to see her face and imagine it streaming with water, flushed, her mouth red and gasping. 

He takes quite a few cold showers. More than is proper and befitting a CAG, certainly, but Lee’s got bigger things to care about. 

It’s pushing three whole rotations later when he figures he should probably try and apologise before they have CAP together and she manages to accidentally blow him out of the sky. He sees her, finally, at the other end of a corridor, and follows her at just a far enough distance to make it look like he's just heading in the same direction.

She takes one unexpected turn, then another, and slows down, coming to a stop outside a hatch. She pauses for a moment, and then pushes the hatch open and disappears inside. Frak, he thinks, because he can't very well casually stand outside waiting for her to reappear again, and starts walking past and just as he draws level with the door, a hand fastens on his collar and yanks him inside.

By the time he’s worked out which way is up, Kara has locked the hatch and is standing, glaring at him, her cheeks flushed.

“Hi,” he says, because he can’t think of anything else, and for a moment, he swears she almost smiles. Then it’s gone.

“Why were you following me?”

“I wasn’t following you.”

“Bullshit.”

He shrugs. “It was worth a shot.”

He looks around, taking in the dusty equipment and tables full of test tubes - Baltar’s been officially diagnosed insane for two months now, and nobody understands enough of his work to keep going – and then back at her.

“So, um,” he says after a moment, “Why am I here?”

Kara tilts her head, and her smile has something cruel in it. “Payback’s a bitch, Captain.”

And then her fingers wrap around the hem of his tanks, and she wrenches them up over his head and he knows he should have picked this from something, the way she was standing, or the look on her face, but she’s stripping them both fast and methodically, and time goes in a whirl of tanks and dog tags and skin on skin until then his back is cold on the floor and she’s kneeling over him, her hair falling around her face. 

When she straddles him, he jerks, hands scrabbling for purchase on the floor, catching on the legs of the table still covered in Baltar’s equipment. He wraps his fingers around the cold metal, throws his head back, stares at the ceiling and counts desperately as she slips down over him.

“Lee,” she says, sharply, and he looks back at her, all skin and breasts and mouth and he swallows hard against the words he wants to say, ‘gods’ and ‘please’ and ‘kara’ and ‘now’. "Think you can handle me?" 

When he doesn’t say anything, and she smirks, planting her hands on his shoulders and leaning in, close. His hands are so tightly clenched they are aching. She rolls her hips, rising up, settling back down so gods-damned slowly that he groans, and she smirks again. "Lee?"

He tries to speak, he tries, but she’s rocking against him and he can’t think, can’t think about anything other than her and how she’s hot and wet and  _gods_ , so perfect he can’t even  _breathe_. 

He says her name when he comes, he knows that much, and when he can see again, she’s looking at him and he doesn’t know what the expression on her face means. 

Then it snaps. She gets off him, and it’s not even graceful but he still wants her again, right away, and he’s lying on the floor watching her as she cleans herself up, picks up her clothes and shakes them out. 

“Happy now?” he says, as she pulls her tanks over her head. 

She looks down over him. “Since when was this about happiness?” she says, and the note of bitterness in her voice surprises him. 

The hatch makes a soft ‘snick’ sound as it shuts. 

*

Kara’s good at being elusive when she wants to be, but he’s spent a lot of his time on Galactica studying her, so he knows where she’s likely to go when she’s mad at the world. If it’s not the hangar and not the gym, she’s either running it out somewhere around the Galactica, or up in one of the unused observation decks.

He’s betting on the latter.

Sure enough, she’s there, sitting knees up on the floor, back to the wall. She doesn’t turn around when she hears him coming.

“Go away, Apollo,” she says, and deliberately looks away.

“No,” he says, and bobs down beside her. There’s a long moment of silence, and then she shifts restlessly and turns to face him.

“Look, are we done here? Is your game over?”

“Oh, like this was ever my game.”

“You started it.”

“For frak’s sake, Kara. What’s the problem?”

“Clearly, nothing. You happy now? You’ve frakked me, I’ve frakked you, okay? We’re even, so you can just – just go back to being normal again.”

It stings, but there is a shake in her voice now and she still isn’t looking at him. He crouches down lower.

“Is that all you want?”

“Is that all you want?” she counters in a heartbeat, and he’s been saying things without thinking so much for the last three days it’s become almost a habit, so he says “No” before he thinks to shut his mouth.

She freezes, her eyes widening. It would have been comical if she hadn’t looked so bewildered, like it was the complete opposite to what she was expecting. 

He always forgets how little she values herself.

“Kara,” he says softly, and pushes the hair back out of her face. “This isn’t a game.”

She looks at him, and she’s somehow more naked now than she was three hours before. His chest tightens and he brushes his thumb across her cheekbone. “It was never a game.”

She nods, once. 

“I promise.”

“Okay.” 

“Okay,” he repeats, and they stare at each other for a moment. “So,” he says, finally. “Nice place. Come here often?”

It works; she relaxes, smiles and it’s beautiful, and Lee sits down and pulls her to him before she can think of running, so she’s sitting between his legs, her back to his chest. He wraps his arms around her waist, and after a moment, one of her hands rests almost tentatively on his. 

“Lee…”

“Yes?”

“If it was a game, you know I won, right?”

“Oh, frak you,” he says into her hair, and tightens his hold on her.

  
  
*


End file.
